Prayer request

Now that our entire congregation has been made aware of the financial situation of the church (previously only leadership and staff knew about it), I feel the freedom to share briefly what’s up.

Our church has an aging congregation and during the past two years, we’ve unfortunately had numerous funerals for faithful members of the church.  Due to the loss of some of our most faithful members (and their giving each month), the church has been operating in the red for quite awhile and has almost completely exhausted its reserves in the general fund.

To make a long story short, in 5.4 months — if giving/spending continues “as is” – our church will run out of operating money and need to close the doors.

Consequently, the church leadership is facing some major decisions.  Do they lay off staff?  Close the church?  Or what?  The future is definitely uncertain at this point.  Any prayers would be greatly appreciated!

Plus, I have a personal stake in this whole situation because my part-time job at the church is currently my main source of income because book royalties and other things have pretty much died off to nothing the past couple of years.

~Debi

PS:  For those people who like to pray with specifics, the church needs to increase income or decrease spending by nearly $3,000(!) per month to get into the black.  The financial secretary said that if 90 giving units increased their giving by about $32 per month, we’d break even each month.  The difficult thing is that we’re a small church with many people on fixed incomes, so even that small increase in giving is beyond the means of many of our members.

Quick question for my blog readers

I’ve been asked to put together a little booklet/pamphlet for my church congregation on the things I’ve learned at three church-related conferences I’ve attended this year.  The topics of workshops I attended are mainly on evangelism, outreach, building healthy churches, and mission/missional living. 

Would anyone out there be interested in a copy of the information when I get it put together?  I might be able to make the booklets into a PDF file or some other easy-to-access application (or I suppose I could just send it via email in a Publisher and/or Word file).  It probably won’t be ready to distribute for another couple of weeks or so.

Anyway, just curious if it’s something of interest beyond our church’s four walls.

~Debi

PS:    I just realized I can also probably put together the notes from some of the workshops I’ve taught at church lately:  Intro to Inductive Bible Study, Cooking for the Freezer, Living Within Your Means.  Any interest?

I can’t really guarantee the workshops based on my books would be okay to use, however, because I’ll need to doublecheck to make sure the content isn’t directly from my copyrighted book materials (I’m afraid my publishers would frown on me giving that away). 

Summer’s up and rolling

While it seems most churches tend to gear down for the summer (stopping Bible studies, etc.), for some reason the church I work at ramps things up for the summer.

For example, each weekday, we serve a free lunch to kids in the neighborhood in conjunction with the local school district’s free summer lunch program.  Most of the summer lunch program locations are in local parks, but we open our dining area to the community and the school district provides the food, etc.  All we have to do is supply the space and the volunteers.  Honestly, it’s just about the easiest outreach ever.  We usually serve anywhere from 15 to 50 kids each day.

The summer lunch program is a great way to build relationships with local families, and also keep in contact with some of the kids we’ve gotten to know through volunteering at the elementary school across the street during the school year.  This year, we’re even going to hire someone part-time for the summer to help out with games, activities and maybe some tutoring each day after the lunch program.

We also started a new mid-week inductive Bible study on Wednesday evenings throughout the summer.  It’s sort of a follow-up to the Alpha program that we ran throughout this past year, and it’s definitely met a need in a lot of people’s lives for a more indepth Bible study (but it also includes a variety of options for study knowing that not everyone has a lot of time during the summer to do extensive homework).  I’m pretty pleased with how it’s been going.  It was sort of a test project … and I think it’s passing the test. 

Anyway, both of those things (summer lunch and the mid-week Bible study) are really absorbing my time and effort this summer since I’m heading up both those ministries this year.  It’s definitely exciting to see what God’s doing in our community.

If you think about it, could I ask you to pray for our church?  We’re facing a bit of a crisis (mainly financial) and the church is going to need to make some extremely serious decisions in the very near future.   A nice little (or big?!) miracle would be very appreciated about now. 

More later …

~Debi

A father to the fatherless …

Today on the Bible Verse of the Day widget in the sidebar of this blog, the following verse came up:

“Sing to God, sing praise to his name, extol him who rides on the clouds — his name is the LORD— and rejoice before him. A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.”  Psalm 68:4-5

Shortly before all the huge changes in our lives  (my husband moving out due to his health issues, selling our home, moving to a new community, starting life as a single mom, etc.), I’d been sitting in church and the pastor was talking about how God can be exactly what we need when we need it.  The pastor asked us all to take a few minutes and quietly in our hearts ask God what we needed Him to be for us at that moment.

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As I sat there in the silence thinking about all the huge changes looming in our lives, the phrase “a father to the fatherless and a husband to the widow” came clearly to my mind.  It was exactly what I needed to know.  That God would care for my kids — and for me! — as we negotiated the scary, unknown future we were facing.

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It was a comforting reminder of His pressence and His care when I saw that verse pop up on my blog today, especially in light of Father’s Day coming up this weekend.  We’ve found that Father’s Day is a particularly difficult day for my kids each year because their dad has repeatedly chosen to NOT spend Father’s Day with his children, even breaking plans with them so he can go out to ball games with friends, etc.

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If you think about me or my family this week, could you pray for my children and for Father’s Day?  I pray they won’t spend the day crying – actually more like gut-wrenching sobbing – like last year.

Crazy … crazy … crazy! lol

Wow, life has been so crazy the past month.  I’m not even going to try to catch everyone up on the on-going insanity.  But I do want to tell you about this past weekend.  It’s a good example of what life’s been like lately.   I went to a three day church-related conference in Atlanta, Georgia.  The conference itself was really good … but everything else was a comedy of errors … pretty much whatever could go wrong, did go wrong.

The plane going to Atlanta was delayed 2 1/2 hours because of severe weather in Atlanta that closed the airport.  We had to detour to Birmingham, Alabama to refuel because we were running low on fuel as we circled Atlanta.

Because we were so late getting into Atlanta, I missed dinner and the opening ceremonies for the conference.

The next morning when I went to check in for the conference, they didn’t have any record of me being signed up!  LOL!  But they decided that since I’d flown all the way from Seattle to Atlanta, they’d let me attend the workshops for free (but I wasn’t able to eat any of the conference meals or attend the dinner sessions).  Consequently, I ate every meal for three days out of the snack bar at the hotel … cold sandwiches, yogurt, chips, small salads … I was starving for a hot meal that I could sink my fork into!  lol

On Friday afternoon, I found a note under the door of my room saying that the credit card I’d used when I checked in wasn’t approved (this was the church’;s credit card).  When  I went to the front desk, she told me that it just hadn’t scanned properly and there wasn’t really a problem … they just needed to re-scan it.  So all was well.

Or so we thought. 

On Saturday evening when I came back from the closing ceremonies and celebration at Centennial Olympic Park, I was hot, sticky and absolutely exhausted.  All I wanted to do was eat a small tub of ice cream in my room with my feet up on the bed, watch some brainless television, and sleep.

So I bought my ice cream, headed to my room … and then found that the key card wouldn’t open the door!

So back to the front desk to find out that they’d locked me out because the church credit card wasn’t approved!  :-O

I didn’t have enough money in my checking account to put the hotel bill on my debit card, so then began a series of really crazy, stupid events (I’ll spare you the details) trying to find someone home in Auburn who had access to a Fax machine and a church credit card on a Saturday evening … LOL!

And if that wasn’t bad enough, the guy at the front desk kept messing up with my key card so I had to go up and down the elevator (11 floors!) at least six times before I FINALLY was able to get back in my room!  I ate my ice cream standing in the hallway outside my room waiting for security to come let me in.

So much for my nice relaxing evening of ice cream in my room … it was so crazy!

I was so glad to get back home on Sunday.  The flight home was uneventful.  Thank goodness!

I haven’t heard yet what was wrong with the credit card (my pastor ended up having to use his card to pay for my hotel bill … I think he has a fax at home so he hopefully didn’t have to run down to the church office to take care of it on his day off).

Anyway, I spent yesterday sitting around the house feeling glazed over.  Just basically got myself caught up on laundry and sleep.  Funny how easily jet lag can set in, even from just a short trip.  And especially with all the craziness of this trip.  lol 

So … now you’ve gotten a peek into what my life has been like lately.  This trip to Atlanta was just pretty representative of how everything else has been going the past month or so.  So is my life turning into “A Comedy of Errors” or more of “A Series of Unfortunate Events”?  lol

Hoping to stay in touch better in the future …

Update

Wow, I just realized that my last post on this blog was back on April 24th.  No wonder I keep getting email from people who are worried about me.  I fell off the face of the Blogsphere, didn’t I?

I have a whopper of a headache today so I’m going to keep this pretty short.

1)  I have my Driver’s License back again! After nearly two months without it, I almost feel like I’m 16 again with my first license.  The freedom is wonderful!  Now, don’t get me wrong … I love public transit and truly appreciate rides from friends … but wow … to be able to run out to the store for something quick and easy is practically heaven for me now! 

2) Last week, I attended a three day conference in Boise, Idaho (Presbyterians for Renewal Small Church Conference).   Other than having my hairspray and toothpaste confiscated by airport security (they were both slightly too big), traveling was uneventful (I absolutely hate flying, so uneventful travel is a very good thing!).  The conference itself was fabulous.  I’m still processing so much of what I heard and learned … just trying to prayerfully discern how to apply the concepts to our church in Auburn.  Mark Labberton (author of The Dangerous Act of Worship and pastor of First Presbyterian Church in Berkley, CA) was the featured speaker.  His thoughts on what it means to be missional in today’s cultural context were powerful, inspirational and thought-provoking.  Still thinking, here.  Probably will be for quite some time.

3) I don’t even know what to say about how things stand with my husband.  He’s physically/mentally doing much better than expected, but his current lifestyle and moral choices are leaving a wake of devastation in our family.  It’s so heart-breaking to see this awful disease take him from us in so many ways.  He’s become a completely different person with a totally different set of values and priorities.  Unfortunately, the kids and I seem to have slipped off his radar as anything of value to him anymore.  It’s all so sad.  He’s essentially left us physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and moved on with another life altogether.  Sometimes I’m just almost in shock when I look at my life and see where it’s come the past few years.  I NEVER would’ve thought ten years ago I’d be essentially a single mom and he’d be living the life of a free-and-easy single man complete with a nearly live-in girlfriend, etc.  It’s just crazy.

Prayers would be greatly appreciated as I atttempt to negotiate the tangled mess of our marriage and try to figure out where to go from here.  This married-but-not situation is taking its toll on everyone.

Despite all the turmoil, I’m actually doing pretty well these days.  Even in the midst of it all, I can see a glimmer of hope.  A bit of light in the future.  It’s just finding the path through the present that’s so precarious right now.

Going to go take some headache medicine and lie down for awhile.  Thanks everyone for all your kind thoughts, prayers and concern.

A quick P.S.

Since I sort of emphasized only certain aspects in my life in that update post, I also just wanted to let you all know that thanks to the generosity of a number of people in my life, my church, and even here on the Internet, I’ve been able to keep my head above water the past few weeks even after having my bank accounts completely drained unexpectedly.  We’ve had food, shelter, warmth … and the peace of mind of knowing that God sees our needs and provides.  Things are still crazy and difficult, but not quite the acute crisis it was before.  :-)

An update of sorts …

Sorry for disappearing again and worrying some of you.  I’m just really tired and can’t get up the gumption to even attempt to explain what’s been happening.  But I’ll try (sorry in advance if I sound like I’m whining … it’s just the tiredness speaking).

Just to refresh your memory, I’d made payment arrangements on a ticket that came from forgetting to change my address when I moved so the renewal notice never arrived for my driver’s license and I got ticketed severely for driving without a license (gosh, talk about feeling like an idiot … geez).

Anyway, evidently I was a couple of days late with the payment several months ago, and that’s what caused the garnishment of my bank accounts last month.  Turns out they also suspended my driver’s license at the same time, so we’ve been essentially without a car ever since.

They won’t let me work out new payment arrangements and reinstate my license until the money the bank took from my accounts actually works its way to the account of the creditor dealing with the payments.   I would’ve thought that would be a relatively quick process, but it turns out it can take about six weeks for the money to finally work its way to where it needs to be.  In the meantime, I can do absolutely nothing to expedite the situation (short of paying the entire thing in full, that is, which I can’t do — unless we’re willing to go without food, lights, heat and a place to live!).

So I’m still waiting for the money to get to the creditor and then I get to talk with them about new payment arrangements.  It’ll take at least a week (probably more like two) for my license to be reinstated even after everything’s worked out with the creditors.  The wheels of this whole thing turn so very slowly.  :::sigh:::  So I’ll probably be without the ability to drive for at least another month … and that timeline is only valid providing all goes well.  So it could be even longer.

While I’m thankful that I have access to a good city bus system, it’s still really frustrating to not have access to my own transportation.  Even simple things like going to the store for milk and eggs can turn into a couple of hours event. 

There are aspects of my job at church that I’m having trouble doing because of my lack of transportation.  The bus doesn’t go everywhere I need to be, plus the whole process just eats so much time out of my day spending time waiting around at bus stops and sitting at transfer stations when I need to be places and doing things NOW all over town.  It’s really frustrating. 

Plus a number of people (family, friends, co-workers, etc.) have started getting upset with me because I’m having trouble meeting commitments and getting places with no vehicle.  For example, there’s no way I can get to Olympia anymore to visit or help with family commitments down there.

Anyway, I’m mainly just tired.  And I feel so drained and exhausted.  And frustrated.

Hopefully I’ll be able to work out payment arrangments soon and start the wheels turning toward getting my license back.  But it’s such a slow process, and like I said previously, there’s absolutely nothing I can do to expedite it.  That’s probably where a lot of the tiredness and frustration’s coming from — just the knowledge that there’s nothing I can do to fix it except wait.  And the wait is frustrating and effecting so many areas of my life.

For example, my kids want to take a weekend and go to a friend’s island cabin (we haven’t had any sort of vacation or time away in well over a year), but we can’t go to the island because I can’t drive there and there’s no other way to get there.  I’d even just be happy being able to spend a day at the beach with my kids, but we can’t go there either.

I’ve probably never felt more in need of a vacation than I do right now, but the prospects are slim for anything at all this year (from both financial reasons and just the logistics of getting somewhere without driving).

At least the weather’s nice this week.  Seeing sunshine always brightens my day. 

And on a whole ‘nother front, things are going very badly with my husband’s situation.  He’s making some life choices that are causing untold grief for the kids and I.  Suffice it to say, I now have Biblical grounds for officially ending our marriage.  I know it’s the loss of his moral compass due to his degenerative brain disorder that’s caused him to act in ways that he normally wouldn’t have, so the whole situation is confusing and heartbreaking on so many levels.  My kids have all told me they want me to divorce their dad (they have a number of reasons for feeling that way, some legal and financial, as well as emotional and Biblical).

I had to stop typing for a minute just now because he called and cancelled plans with his kids so he can go to Vancouver, Canada for the weekend with his new “friend.”  This cancelling plans with his kids to spend time with his friend is sort of a long time situation that’s been happening for about two years.  It’s getting very old.  And I can’t confront him about it or talk to him about how he’s hurting and disappointing his kids because then I risk sending him into one of his rages which puts all of us in actual danger.

This whole situation just breaks my heart — in ways I never even knew a heart could be broken.  As I said, I’m so tired.  I think I could use a good month-long nap.  lol

Continued prayers appreciated.  Especially for finances, my job situation, and for our on-going crazy family situation.

Quote of the Week …

“… I couldn’t help wondering if maybe that was what God put me on Earth for — to find out how much a man could take without breaking.”

~Dwayne Hoover (in Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut)

Dwayne eventually did break in the book.  So I’m praying that the “Destructive Testing” in my life has a different conclusion. 

Just checking in quickly …

Sorry to dump that last post on my blog about the financial emergency and then essentially disappear from cyberspace.  I’ve gotten a few emails from folks who’ve been concerned.    So sorry if I overly worried anyone!

I think I’m still sort of in shock about what’s happening.

I’ve been dealing as best I can with the state of things.  I’d really rather not go into to the details here, but suffice it to say that the hurricane isn’t over yet … it’s just more like I’ve entered the eye of the storm.  I survived the first part of the storm … things are relatively calm as I type today … but the other side of the storm’s going to hit soon and I’m hoping to use this calm period to get the funds together to take care of the situation before it strikes in full fury again.

It’s been such a blessing, though, to see the Body of Christ rally around us in the midst of this current craziness.  A woman I’ve known online slightly for years and years sent me a check.  A woman from church who’s sort of adopted our family gave me an envelope filled with cash.  The Deacons at church gave us a generous financial gift.  One of my youngest daughter’s small group leaders felt led to share with us.  And a number of my website visitors and blog readers have donated various amounts, too.  It’s been amazing to witness.

One of my friends said in an email last week: ” My prayer is that God will meet your needs beyond what you could ask or think.”  It’s been interesting to see her prayer coming to fruition each day.

God hasn’t stepped in and fixed the problem in one swoop (like I’d honestly  sort of hoped He would), but He’s allowed me to see how the Church – His Body – is supposed to function as we’ve seen friends, family, and even essential strangers rally around us and support us in prayer, practical help, financial gifts, and just general love and care.

After the way our former church abandoned us when my husband’s illness struck, this has been such a blessing to me.  Esssentially nearly everyone at our former church said, “I’ll be praying for you,” and then did nothing.  No hands and feet applied to their prayers.  It was like it never dawned on them that maybe God wanted to use them to be the answer to their own prayers. 

This current situation has helped me separate the lack of care from our old church from the actual care of God.  Those people let us down, not God.  It’s such a refreshing thing to see things in the Church and among His people function as they should …

But isn’t that funny?  A severe emergency has become a tremendous blessing and encouragement in my life.  I guess it’s one of those “God works all things together for good” happenings.

Well, I need to run right now.  Have to make some phone calls and continue working on all of this.  Prayers, etc.,  are definitely still appreciated because we’re not out of the woods yet.  Like I said, God hasn’t stepped in and solved the problem per se … He’s just faithfully shown me bit by bit that He’s there and that He cares.  And He’s used a number of YOU to show me that.  Thank you so much!

More later …

~Debi